i a72d981dc0406879 (17 page)

"Not today, tomorrow- Oh, he's coming! Noon tomorrow, I'll come
to you!"

In a stunned state I'd hung up the telephone and conveyed
Frances's information to Michael and Wish. We were still all seated
around the kitchen table, where we'd spent the morning in a kind of
staff meeting. Our lighthearted mood had been broken. Very shortly
I excused myself and went to my desk, Wish went out somewhere, and
Michael retired to his office.

I got out paper and pencil to make a list. The first order of
business must be to obtain a copy of the
Examiner,
to
confirm what Frances had overheard. I wrote that down, and then I
wrote:
Jeremy
M.-
How did he know before it made the
papers?

The most obvious way, of course, would be if he had done the
murders himself. Or caused them to be done. But that was
too
obvious. Wasn't it?

I pondered this possibility. Could Jeremy McFadden be so jealous
of his wife's time, attention, and affections that he would commit
murder in order to ... to what? To keep Frances from attending any
more seances? To scare Frances off such activities?

"Oh, pshaw!" I muttered. Surely that couldn't be, it was too
outlandish, no one could possibly be that possessive. Or, being
that possessive, go to the extreme of murder. Twice.

And yet, having had the idea, I could not let it go no matter
how outlandish. Maybe it was just that simple, and the police
didn't know to look at Jeremy as a suspect because I hadn't wanted
to get Frances in trouble by reporting Abigail's body.

Oh Lord.
I was seized by a horrid, creeping sense of
guilt. If that did prove to be the case, if Jeremy McFadden turned
out to be the murderer of both these dead mediums, then I myself
could be held responsible-morally, anyway-for the death of the
second one, Ingrid Swann. Because the police didn't know, they had
no idea, that Frances McFadden had been in any way involved. If I
hadn't decided not to report Abigail Locke's murder to the police
... I couldn't even bear to finish the thought.

I felt as if my career in detection had been the briefest on
record, and now must be over before it began. How could I carry on
in the business if I had no more sense than to conduct myself in
such a way as to get people killed? I was supposed to be solving
crimes and puzzles and conundrums, not making them!

For I don't know how long I sat still as a stone, my mind a
complete blank. I just could not deal with this. I didn't know how.
And then, suddenly, I did.

I pushed back from my desk and went back to Michael's office,
intending to confide in him, to tell him what I'd done, to ask what
I should do now. His door was open and he sat bent over a book,
reading with the absolute concentration he has that shuts
everything else out. Even me. I stood there for a heartbeat or two,
and then stealthily I went away. Back to my desk, to make my list,
to answer the telephone, to watch the hours of the clock creep
around to two, when the afternoon edition of the
Examiner
would begin to hit the streets.

I was sure my situation now was not one my mother could ever
have visualized, but I applied her lesson nonetheless: This was a
burden I had to carry alone. My first case. I had to do it right,
at least from this point onward, and I had to make it on my
own.

"You have heard, I presume," I said to Patrick Rule late the
next morning. We sat at the long table in the conference room,
preparing for Frances's arrival at noon.

He nodded gravely. "You mean about Ingrid." His face seemed
drawn and was pale, hollow-eyed, as if he had been for far too long
without sleep.

"Yes," I said.

The
Examiner
article had been terse and to the point: The
body of Ingrid Swann, world-renowned medium now based in San
Francisco, had been found by her brother, Ngaio, early the previous
morning. She had died from stab wounds to the chest. Whether or not
the wounds themselves resembled those in the chest of Abigail
Locke, the newspaper article hadn't said. This morning's more
sensational press had had less compunction, they'd come right out
with banner headlines proclaiming murderer of mediums on the loose
in city by the bay! Michael, ever helpful, had brought all the
morning editions home with him from his breakfast bakery run, and
the papers lay now fanned out on the conference table.

"Perhaps the police will work harder now to catch the killer," I
said, hoping to allay Patrick's misery.

He nodded again but said nothing further, and as I did not know
what to say myself, we sat in silence. I could hear Michael as he
turned the page of a book in his office, it was that still; I could
hear the tick of the hands and the tock of the swinging pendulum of
the old wall clock out in the kitchen. It was a sunny day, with
light pouring through the lace curtains (perhaps not all that
appropriate for an office, but this had been a dining room before
and they'd come with the house) to make intricate shadow patterns
on the rug. In the next room, Michael turned another page. From the
kitchen, the clock struck in rapid little pings, twelve of them:
high noon.

Still no Frances.

Patrick Rule bestirred himself, adjusted his necktie, fiddled
with his collar, and aimed his curiously empty eyes toward the
front door.

Ready and waiting, I thought. Then suddenly I recalled how he
had looked not at me but through me to the door beyond at the
seance, and had announced Mrs. Locke's arrival before that door
behind me opened. What curious ability did he have, to perceive
someone's coming before they came?

Whatever it might be called, he certainly possessed it, for in
that very instant the door opened, its bell rang, and I hurriedly
said, "I need to prepare her. She isn't expecting you. I was able
to leave her only the briefest message. Stay here, please. We'll be
right in." Raising my voice, I called out, "Frances! Wait right
there if you please. I'm coming out."

The Emperor Norton, ghost or no ghost, was doing well by this
young matron. I had never seen Frances McFadden so glowing, nor
more attractively dressed. Her day dress was a rich, deep shade of
blue, of some simple material like chambray, but far from simple in
design. The collar and neck insert were of sheer white cotton,
embroidered with little blue flowers, and so were the cuffs on the
long sleeves. Her modishly short skirt just grazed her ankle tops
and showed enticing flashes of a similarly embroidered petticoat
when she moved.

I tendered the usual greeting, then drew her aside, speaking
rapidly and low: "Frances, I must brief you about this meeting
before it begins. Mr. Patrick Rule is in the other room. He has
hired me to augment the police investigation into the murder of
Abigail Locke."

Frances's eyes widened enormously, her lips parted, but I
covered them with my own fingertips before she could say anything.
"Part of the bargain I've made with him concerns you. In returnfor
my help, Patrick Rule is to find you a good teacher and mentor for
your mediumship."

"My . . . mediumship?"

"You do want to develop that talent, don't you?"
So that you
can get away from a husband who mistreats you,
I thought but
did not say.

Too surprised to argue, she merely nodded. I'd been counting on
that.

"Just one thing," I said. "No matter what happens, you must say
nothing about our having been the first to find Mrs. Locke's body.
I wish now that I'd acted differently, but I didn't and that is
that. Do you agree?"

"Yes, of course. Whatever you say, Fremont."

"Good. Well then, are you ready?"

"Oh yes. Where is he? In the next room?"

Before I could answer, Frances began to move toward the dining
room like a woman in a dream, like a woman being reeled in on an
invisible line. How extraordinary!

Some minutes later, watching them together, I had a new and
altogether unexpected thought: Mr. Rule has found his next medium.
The instant rapport between those two astounded me.

Either Patrick and Frances had been made for each other, and
only just now found their chance to come together, or the things
he'd told me about himself the previous day had been a lie. This
was not a performance by some mere "sensitive" man who could
sometimes receive thought messages in a passive way from a woman,
one woman only, and she now dead. In fact, this man was not passive
at all. He had somehow, instantly, established such sway over this
particular woman, Frances, that she was focused on him like a
hypnotized snake. Yet he had not hypnotized her, I knew that
because I'd watched and listened every minute. Still she swayed, as
it were, to the curl of his fingers, the curves of his voice.

Theoretically, Patrick Rule was only here to test the range of
Frances's natural abilities, something I was far from qualified to
do myself. He was only asking her questions, and she answering
them; questions of a routine sort, such as,
When did you first
become attracted to Spiritualism? Was it idle curiosity or had you
had some experience?
But I sensed there was more going on, and
it made me uneasy.

"Do you wish to make contact with anyone now," Patrick was
saying, "or is there a spirit already in contact with you who wants
to come through?"

Frances closed her eyes. She leaned a little from side to side,
as the weeping willow will bend to a wind so slight it can scarcely
be felt. My own skin broke out in goose bumps all over. I leaned
forward.

Patrick Rule, without taking his eyes from Frances, placed his
left hand on the table, palm up. I knew somehow he meant me to take
it, and I did; I placed my own right hand in his left and his
fingers closed over mine. His touch was hot and electric, producing
a shock of a most embarrassingly sexual kind. I felt it in that
part of my body that I have come to think of as the seat of
pleasure-but only for an instant, then it was gone, and my
attention back on Frances. Patrick's own attention had never left
her.

Have I mentioned that Patrick had an exceptional voice? A
smooth, rich baritone that he could manipulate to good effect. He
spoke now as if bringing up that voice from deep in his chest: "If
there is any spirit present who wishes to come through this woman,
Frances McFadden, I invite that spirit to make itself known."

Eyes closed, Frances frowned; she bent forward, as if straining
. . . straining ... In sympathetic tension, I felt Patrick's
fingers tighten over mine. Indeed, his grip became almost
painful.

Frances exhaled a long breath from her mouth, incredibly long,
it seemed to me. I wondered how she could have any breath left in
her body after that. Then rather noisily she drew in an equally
great breath through her nose, her bosom rose . . . and justwhen I
had the absurd, not to mention irreverent, thought that she might
burst like a balloon, her eyes opened. Her shoulders settled into
their usual fashionable slope, and she looked at us with quite her
normal, pleasant expression.

"The dogs were there," she said, as if it were the most
reasonable thing in the world, describing some tea party she'd been
to, or a sporting event, "and they will not let him cross."

"Were you in contact with the spirit?" Patrick asked.

"No, not in the sense that he was speaking to me, or putting
thoughts in my head, but I knew he was there. I could tell. And I
could-well, it's hard to describe."

"Do the best you can. I shall be able to follow you."

"I could feel the presence of the dogs, guarding him. They were
like-like a barrier, an invisible wall."

"Ah. Dogs."

"Yes. The same as barked through Mrs. Locke that day, you
remember, when I went into trance so unexpectedly at the seance.
Mr. Rule, it is not I who first made this happen, it was she. She
was the one who gave voice to the dogs, or one of them. Lazarus, it
was. I only happened to be there in the room, and receptive, so
that he could come through me. And then he was able to find me
again."

"He? Who is it that you speak of?"

"The Emperor."

"Ah, the Emperor. Frances, let us return to the dog or dogs.
Tell me more about them. They sound like familiar spirits, and
familiar spirits can be either benign or malign. One must be
careful in making contact with spirits that come across on the
ethereal plane as being other than human."

Frances flicked her eyes at me. Patrick Rule still held my hand.
I could see no need of it, because the part of the interview that
might have turned into a seance was clearly over now, but I did not
want to disturb this process by reclaiming my hand. In the overall
context of things, it would have seemed unnecessarily disruptive at
that moment. I gave Frances the slightest nod, and immediately she
continued:

"They're just dogs. You know, curs, mongrels. They've passed on
too. Lazarus was the first to go, and then Bummer-he's the more
playful of the two. They're the Emperor's dogs, that's all."

But Patrick was skeptical. "We can't be certain. You should not
be so accepting of that; more investigation will be required. Now
tell me more about the Emperor himself."

"His full title is Norton I, Emperor of the United States and
Protector of Mexico. Of course he knows he isn't, not really, but
that's what he thought when he was alive. He's a good fellow. Mr.
Rule, Fremont, I don't understand why you're asking me all these
questions."

Now seemed the perfect time for me to take my hand back, which I
did, and put both in my lap. I chose to answer her myself. "Mr.
Rule believes some kind of negative influence-is that fair to say?"
I waited for his nod of assent before continuing. "Some kind of
negative influence may have come through that day you and I
attended the seance. It was the last seance Abigail Locke ever
gave, after all, and something peculiar did happen."